Robert Spencer: John Kerry Learns from the Enemy

In FrontPage, I discuss the latest example of how U.S. officials are listening to the wrong people, which explains why they keep making the wrong decisions:

Secretary of State John Kerry is reading up, learning that Islam is “not represented by a lot of jihadists and others,” but is, rather, “a beautiful religion.” He said this a few days ago in Berlin:

And unfortunately, in too many parts of the world, some religions – not – and I’m not just speaking of one religion or another. You have intolerance in a number of different kinds of religions or points of view in different things. I know that Islam is not represented by a lot of jihadists and others. I know it’s a beautiful religion. I’ve read more and more about it.

I’ve been reading a book recently called No god but God, which is the history of the Prophet and where he came from and how it developed as a religion. It’s fascinating. If I went back to college today, I’d probably go back and be a comparative religion major and a comparative literature major, because those are the things that help you understand what makes people tick and how they’re working and how they think. But the important thing is to have the tolerance to say you can have a different point of view.

What could possibly go wrong? This: No god but God is a whitewash of Islam written by none other than the childish Islamic supremacist pseudo-academic Reza Aslan. Aslan is Board member of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). In 2008, NIAC chief Trita Parsi sued Seid Hassan Daioleslam for defamation after Daioleslam’s investigative reporting exposed Parsi’s and NIAC’s deep and incontrovertible ties to high-level agents of the Iranian regime. Parsi lost the case, and NIAC was establish as a front group for the bloody mullahcracy in Tehran.

According to Iranian human rights activist Arash Irandoost, “Trita Parsi contributes to the regime’s agenda and serves the interests of those in power in the Islamic Republic of Iran, not the Iranians, nor the Iranian-Americans.” And the Progressive American-Iranian Committee says that when NIAC received funding for various projects from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), “NIAC’s projects were approved and welcomed by the Iranian regime.” NIAC coordinated its work inside Iran with Hamyaran, a “government initiated agency incepted [sic], initiated, founded and managed by the Iranian regime.” NIAC even lobbied the U.S. Congress to “stop appropriating funds for independent democratic movements and NGOs that were not under Hamyaran or regime’s control.”

Yet Reza Aslan remains on its Board.

Is it really wise for John Kerry to be learning about Islam from a Board member of an Islamic Republic front group?

Not only that. Reza Aslan has called for the vandalism of our AFDI ads — that is, the forcible denial of our freedom of speech by thugs.

Is it really wise for John Kerry to be learning about Islam from an enemy of the freedom of speech and endorser of the “heckler’s veto”?

It is no surprise in light of Aslan’s NIAC connection that he has tried to pass off Iran’s genocidally-minded President Ahmadinejad as a liberal reformer. He has called on the U.S. Government to negotiate with Ahmadinejad himself, as well as with Hamas — that is, with two of the most barbaric, genocide-minded and murderous adherents of Sharia.

Aslan has even praised the jihad terror group Hizballah as “the most dynamic political and social organization in Lebanon,” as well as the anti-Semitic, misogynist, Islamic supremacist Muslim Brotherhood, which is dedicated in its own words, according to a captured internal document, to “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within.” Aslan wrote: “The Muslim Brotherhood will have a significant role to play in post-Mubarak Egypt. And that is good thing.” He has not revised this view despite the Muslim Brotherhood regime’s increasing authoritarianism and brutality toward its opponents, or its escalating persecution of Egyptian Christians.

Is it really wise for John Kerry to be learning about Islam from a man who has praised the ascendancy of the brutal Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt?

There is more.